Sticks and Stones

If you are a person: Sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you. If you are a plant: Hail-stones will break your stems, but sticks will save your grass.

On Friday, we received an alert from the National Weather Service on our direct line (thanks Kyle). Our Morse Code skills were a bit rusty, and we struggled at first to decode the message. We caught something about Mother Carey's Chickens, and after some deciphering, realized that a hail storm was in the forecast. Tyler immediately forwarded the message via Morse Code to Jordan, alerting him of the impending danger. After two hours of deciphering, Jordan noticed hail coming down outside, and rushed out to cover the plants. By taking quick action, and after reducing a neighborhood tree to nothing but sticks, Jordan was able to save our garden.

This was the final product. As you can see, the plants were safely huddled under the canopy.

It may have been my imagination, but I could've sworn I heard a round of "Kumbaya" coming from under the canopy.

Impressed by the excellent knot-tying and precision stick-planting of Jordan, Dave and Tyler appointed him to work on the peas, which have recently overtaken the neighboring lettuce.

Through a series of hooks and ladders, chutes and strings, and widdles and doddles, he has given new life to the lettuce, and contained the burgeoning peas.

Most importantly, we have avoided a tragedy, and our garden now looks more like a South American rain forest than a parking lot garden. By surviving the storm (which probably wouldn't have hurt anything anyways), we have preserved our blossoming plants and paved the way for a plentiful harvest.

Here is the most recent aerial view of our tropical forest.